Re: Lighting switch state communication

[nobody@xxxxxxxxxxxx (Dave Houston)]

"intergate news groups" <djraher@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>Dave,
>
>Thanks for the input. I was under the impression that the reliability of the
>X10 and INSTEON units was quite questionable.  The timeliness of the Z-Wave
>signal, if your just talking about 5 seconds or less, isn'tan issue, if the
>signal can be counted on getting there. Since I am not interested in fancy
>lighting effects, but just simple on/off condition dependent triggers, I am
>wondering if I am looking at the wrong group of lighting controls. I even
>thought that a rack of relays controlling the 110V lights, and triggered by
>momentary switches in each room, Through the ELK control panel would meet
>the need, but it seemed there should be a better solution.
>
>Dennis

The quality of the Smarthome devices has improved and they offer excellent
warranties in those cases where there are problems.

You should investigate Z-Wave thoroughly before committing to it. They
operate sequentially with node A sending to node B, node B sending to node
C, etc. It takes a finite amount of time for each hop. The return signal
takes the same path and time. There is a maximum number of hops so a signal
originating at node A cannot go beyond node E. There is a minimum density
required - I expect you will need a nodes within 20' of each other for
reliability. I do not know whether switches signal when operated locally.
There are some limitations on which controllers "hear" activity. You really
need to address your specific questions to someone who works with it (e.g.
Dean Roddey uses it in his small apartment.) but I would take anything said
by dealers with several tons of salt. The devil is in the details. I asked
one of the dealers about how long it takes a signal to traverse the network
and he got an answer from one of the Zensys engineers. IIRC it takes about
250ms from A-E and another 250ms from E-A assuming there are no glitches
that require retransmissions. But Dean Roddey seemed to indicate it was
really much, much slower than that.

You also need to investigate whether the ELK hardware you plan to use can
"hear" the extended codes sent by the Leviton switches. While Leviton calls
them preset dim they are not the same as the standard preset dim defined by
X-10.

Smarthome does use the standard preset dims for reporting status so most
X-10 software will report them.


http://davehouston.net
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/roZetta/
roZetta-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx